I read Trent Jamieson’s Managing Death while devastating floods raged through Brisbane streets and people died in tragic circumstances. This added a surreal aspect to reading that I have found very difficult to put aside.

The city and personality of Brisbane play a major part of this book and with each reference to Mt Coot-tha, Coronation Drive or Southbank a current image of flood drenched streets was superimposed. Just as in the book the world and hell overlap, for me Steven de Selby’s world overlapped with the flooded city.

And Steven is such an Aussie bloke! He makes mistakes, he tries to dodge responsibilities when he can and even though he’s smart, he’s also awkward and so often doesn’t have a clue. And for all this, he is endearing because he is an ‘everyman’ thrust into a position of having to lead in the time of crisis. And so for me, another juxtaposition with reality of so many in Brisbane striving to rise to their challenges.

In book one Death Most Definite, Steven de Selby managed to stave off the Apocalypse and became Regional Manager of Australia’s psychopomps responsible for transitioning a soul into the afterlife. With his girlfriend Lissa and cousin Tim, he has to try and rebuild Mortmax as quickly as possible, plan and run a global Death Moot, learn his job and try and work out how to prevent a ‘zombie’ god from swallowing the world. And then someone starts trying to kill him.

The pace is fast, the humour is black and the plotting is increasingly complex. Book two of a trilogy is often a bridging book, but Trent Jamieson has managed to avoid that trap by making every step in this book logical and yet inventive.

And still for me the parallels to the Brisbane floods are front of mind adding a poignancy to so many aspects of the characters.

What the hell are we supposed to do?”
Tim shuffles his papers, lifts his eyes to mine.
‘We keep going. There’s nothing else we can do. We keep going carefully and cautiously, and we do not stop.’

And so even though the characters, like the reader, have little idea of what is going on and so what actions to take, we are with Steven every step of the way as he tries desperately to save himself and his friends and ultimately prevent chaos taking the world. He simply keeps going, trying to do his best.

This is a great book in a series that is fresh and natural. Book three will be out later in 2011 and I have absolutely NO idea what is going to happen next. I love it!

The second book in Trent Jamieson’s “Steven de Selby” (Death Works) series is great; continuing the witty dialogue, original plot, interesting characters and just all-round darn good yarn that we discovered with the debut book Death Most Definite.

When Death is your subject matter you’re certainly allowed a healthy dose of black humour and Mr Jamieson uses Steven de Selby as not just the anti-hero, but as the perfect mechanism for great one liners and a very British, dry deadpan style of humour that really works wonderfully in this book.

Last time we met here I was on the run for my life and Lissa was dead, so things could be much worse. Silver lining, right?

I don’t know if it’s just the Joss Weadon fan in me coming out, but I’m loving the ‘big-bad’ that is becoming the underlying theme in this series; both the first two books in this series have been complete stories, but leave a few questions unanswered and a sense of anticipation for the next ‘chapter’ in the series.

In Managing Death we get to find a little more about the workings of the ‘high office’ of the Death Regional Managers, and they’re all interesting characters, even the ones that are only glossed over; and of course I do love the fact that New Zealand has its own RM.

Overall Managing Death is a ‘solid’ read, it’s enjoyable and interesting, you want to keep reading but it’s not an all consuming page turner; the settings are an interesting blend of mundane and fantasy, while the characters are well written and I find myself getting more and more attached to them as the story progresses. This is definitely re-readable, and is perfect holiday/weekend enjoyment, just tune the world out and go to hell.